Friday, September 30, 2011

We Are Stardust

I first heard the phrase in Joni Mitchell's song Woodstock: "We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon." I next came across it while reading Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos.' But as with any other profound idea, it took years to sink in. Hearing it again at a recent lecture, I realized I could hear it every day for the rest of my life and still be amazed.

Think about it. In their hot, dense cores, stars are fusing light elements into the heavy ones crucial for life, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and iron. The tiny bits of unused mass left over from these thermonuclear reactions become starlight via the most famous formula in physics, Einstein's E = mc².

We've known this for only a half century. In 1957 Alastair Cameron, in a terse 22-page paper, and Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle, in a not-so-terse 103-pager commonly referred to as B²FH, solved the mystery of the origin of the elements. They showed that except for hydrogen, most helium, and traces of other light elements born in the mother of all creation events, the Big Bang, everything else has been cooked up in stars.

It gets better. While low-mass dwarf stars like the Sun keep most products of their reactions locked up inside like old misers, high-mass supergiant stars spread the wealth like philanthropists in self-obliterating explosions known as supernovae. Some of Earth's rarest elements (such as gold and uranium) are so scarce because they're forged only in the spectacular deaths of rare massive stars.

On average, I heard in the same lecture, each atom in our bodies has been processed through five generations of stars. So we're not just stardust—we're stardust five times over, billions of years in the making!

I don't think the profundity of this statement is universally appreciated among nonastronomers. To raise awareness of our stellar beginnings, I propose a multifaceted campaign. In addition to impressing the public with pretty pictures of distant galaxies, strange tales of bottomless-pit black holes, and the mind-bending notion that the cosmos is 13.7 billion years old, we should constantly remind people that we are, in fact, stardust.

Shorter than a haiku, it could easily be slipped into daily conversation, such as when meeting strangers:
"Hi, my name is John."
"Pleased to meet you. Did you know we're made of stardust?" (Pause for look of astonishment.)

Professors could use it to soften the delivery of bad grades: "You got a C-minus on the exam, but you're still stardust."

Waiters and waitresses could use it to tout the evening's menu: "Tonight's special is pineapple-chicken curry served over basmati rice and made from the finest stardust—like you (wink)".

Instead of advertising radio stations or used cars, airplanes could haul banners over stadiums that read, "We are stardust - Go Red Sox."

To help spread the word, weather reporters could predict: "Tomorrow's forecast calls for sunny skies with a 20% chance of precipitating stardust in the form of rain." Newspapers could trumpet their origins, together with their environmental awareness, by declaring on the front page, "Printed on 100% recycled stardust (just like you)."

Pop-ups could appear on the Internet that read, "We are stardust." After two seconds they'd explode into thousands of pixels that, sometime later, would reform into new pop-ups with the same uplifting message.

Why go to all this trouble? Because knowing this curious fact can give us pride in our origins: it's like we're descended from royalty—only better. Our stellar legacy connects us to the universe and to each other. Like the song says, we are golden—we are stardust. All of us.

About Me

About "Oh, By The Way"

"Oh, By The Way" is my digital scrap book of things I like, things I would share with a close friend and say: “Oh, by the way, do you know of this artist/ clothing or interior designer/ model/ singer/ actor/ gorgeous man… or, have you seen this video/ photo/ film... or heard (or do you remember) this song/ band... or, read this book/ poem/ inspiring quote... or, visited this place/ restaurant/ famous building... or, have you heard of this amazing new scientific discovery?”

I am dedicated to posting the positive, the fascinating, the beautiful, the interesting, the moving, and the inspiring and uplifting. Sometimes I post cultural as well as personal observations, milestones, and remembrances. And just like life, all of these things may often have a bit of melancholy or even sadness in them, which is what makes our time here so lovely and bittersweet and precious.

Some of the photos, art, poetry, and prose are my own original work, credited with my initials, JEF. When it isn't, I always try to post links to the original source material, but often I find photos on the web that are not linked or other material that is not sourced. In these instances, I post them without malice since it is assumed that such things, by being globally posted on something as uncontrollable as the internet to begin with, are in the public domain. If you identify the source of an image that is not linked, please politely let me know (without accusing me of theft) and I will be happy to provide a link.

I hope to inspire and entertain my readers with things that inspire and entertain ME. There is a startling amount of beauty and creativity in the world and it enriches us all to participate in it.

All-time Favorite Films

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

After Hours (Hysterical, hair-raising ride through NYC at night)

Amelie

American Beauty (Alan Ball)

Baraka (Stunning, transcending—the "spiritus mundi" on film)

Belle et Bete (Cocteau)

Big Sleep, The (The epitome of film noir)

Bringing Up Baby (Hepburn & Grant—the epitome of screwball comedy)

Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, The (Greenaway)

Crash (Cronenberg—DIFFICULT subject, not for everyone)

Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg—ultimate modern gothic horror)

Drowning By Numbers (Greenaway)

Easy Rider

Edward II (Derek Jarman)

Erendira (From magic realist Marquez’ brilliant short story)

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick's last film)

Fearless (Jeff Bridges—life and death)

Funny Bones (Leslie Caron, Jerry Lewis, and the brilliant Lee Evans)

Holiday (Hepburn & Grant)

Howard’s End (The ultimate statement of the unfairness of class systems)